


prisoners here, of our own device

by doji_oji



Series: spn episode codas [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s13e14 Good Intentions, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, POV Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 09:58:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13878513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doji_oji/pseuds/doji_oji
Summary: Missing scene for 13x14 "Good Intentions". After what happened with Castiel and Donatello, Sam isn't coping.





	prisoners here, of our own device

**Author's Note:**

> um... have angst I guess? This was supposed to be more comfort-y but it ended up being angsty as fuck whoopsie

Dean wonders what it says about their lives that of all the fucked up shit they’ve done, lugging Donatello’s still form to the hospital, feeding them some bullshit about finding him by the side of the road, then unceremoniously hauling ass before anyone thinks to ask any questions is way, way down the list. Definitely not top ten. Probably not even top two hundred. 

But of course, the whole time Sam has this semi-devastated look on his face that’s he’s obviously desperately trying to hide, and that, along with the topographical map of bruising on his forehead, only serves to make him look even more like a pathetic kicked puppy than usual. It’s doing twisty things to Dean’s heart. And yeah, maybe when they get back, he’s gonna kill Castiel. A little, and very gently. But still. Because Sam’s been spiralling lately, especially since finding out Lucifer is back in (still in?) the picture, and this is just another load of angst and guilt on his shoulders that he doesn’t fucking need.

Dean expects this will end the same way these things always do, lately: an awkward late night talk over beers, wherein Dean flounders, hopelessly out of his depth, until Sam takes pity on him and fucks off to lie in bed and not sleep and let his thoughts swallow him up. (Dean realises, belatedly, that his fingers are curled so tight around the steering wheel that his knuckles are bone-white, and deliberately relaxes his grip.)

He doesn’t expect, ten minutes out from the hospital, for Sam to break the silence in the car by saying, with a voice like a rusty hinge, “Pull over.”

Dean glances at him, frowning, and finds him hunched over himself, looking smaller than a person his size has any right to, jaw clenched so tight he’s liable to crack a tooth. “Pull over,” Sam says again, breath coming harsh in his chest, and Dean wastes no time in veering onto the grassy verge and stepping on the brakes. Before the car has even stopped moving, Sam is out of his seat. Dean follows, and rounds the front of the Impala just in time to see Sam stumble two steps then sink, with surprising grace, to his knees in the grass.

It’s an uncomfortably familiar scene, and even though it’s one from a time long past and best left forgotten, it triggers some sort of Pavlovian response in Dean, and for a split second he thinks  _ vision _ . Then he puts the past back on its shelf and scrambles to Sam’s side, curling hands gently around his wrists (Jesus, Sam’s thin), trying to pry his hands away from his head so he can see his face. “Sam, Sammy, what’s wrong?” Dean babbles, frantic. “Is it your head? C’mon, kiddo, talk to me, I’m kind of freakin’ out here.”

It takes several minutes of cooing and coaxing on Dean’s part before Sam’s death grip on his hair finally eases up, but Dean’s relief is short-lived when Sam lowers his hands and his face is wet with tears. “Hey, hey,” Dean murmurs, heart pounding a drumbeat against his ribs. “What’s the matter, Sammy?” Part of his mind is already drawing a map to the nearest hospital (not the one they just left, can’t go back there without bringing cops down on their asses, shit, he’s going to  _ kill  _ Cas), while the rest is caught up in a simple loop of  _ SamSamSam _ . He lets go of Sam’s wrists to carefully cradle his face instead, thumbs resting in the gaunt hollows of Sam’s cheeks. “Huh? What’s wrong, little brother?”

So far Sam has pointedly not looking at him, eyes cast down, but now he raises his gaze to Dean’s, and there’s a depth of despair there that Dean hasn’t seen since Lucifer was lighting fires in Sam’s head. Even so, Sam huffs a humourless laugh--that sounds less like a laugh and more like all the air being punched out of his lungs--pulling free of Dean’s grasp to wipe at his face. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he says, smiling bitterly.

Dean’s hands are still hovering in the air. He curls them into fists, lowers them with a sigh and says, “This shit with Donatello really fucked with you, huh?”

Sam wraps his arms around himself, looking past Dean towards the flat expanse of fields that stretches out to the horizon. Dean gets the feeling he’s not seeing any of it. “I guess I saw him as… I don’t know, some kind of proof that I wasn’t… a monster.”

Dean blinks. He was expecting guilt and grief, but he has no idea where this is coming from. “What, Sam, what--why would you think you’re a monster? And why would you need  _ Donatello  _ to know you’re not?”

Sam smiles, a sharp flash of teeth full of bitterness and heartbreak that quickly fades. “Because he didn’t have a soul,” he says simply, as though it explains everything. In a fucked up way, it kind of does. Dean wants to fucking cry and also find Lucifer and punch him in the face until the bone shows through.

“Sammy…” he says helplessly, reaching out to smooth Sam’s hair behind his ears, because Sam is eight feet tall and thirty-five years old but he’s still Dean’s baby, goddammit.

“I’m not okay, Dean,” Sam admits in a whisper, and Dean folds him in and presses his lips to the crown of Sam’s head and holds on. After all, what else can he do?

 


End file.
